How A Robbie Myers Impostor Fooled ELLE Via Twitter

by Justin Fenner | 12:33 pm, August 8th, 2010

Ever since Twitter started verifying the accounts of famous people, we’ve been really careful about who we follow, and even more careful about who we retweet (which is why @mrbradgoreski needs to get his account looked at, but we digress).

Zap2It reports that last week, someone claiming to be ELLE magazine editor-in-chief Robbie Myers tweeted the word “Hi” at Joe Zee, the magazine’s creative director (we know and love Zee from ‘The City’ and the hilarious things he tweets from his verified account @mrjoezee). Once Zee had retweeted @TheRobbieMeyers, she started getting followers like wildfire, and other celebrities and entertainment publications, including @ellemagazine, started retweeting her.

The problem, though, was that the person behind @TheRobbieMeyers wasn’t actually Robbie Myers. And it turns out the company didn’t even know it:

Zap2it reached out to our publicity contact at Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., which publishes ELLE. After we had to explain the blunder to our contact via email, they didn’t even respond to our request for a statement. News travels fast and ELLE’s PR director, “The City’s” Erin Kaplan, went into damage control later that same day we reached out for a statement.

On Thursday (August 5) – three days after the company figured out the account was a fake – Kaplan tweeted, “Hi! ELLE’s amazing Editor-In-Chief, Robbie Myers, doesn’t actually have a twitter acct but don’t u all want her to join & start tweeting?!”

We get that social media isn’t supposed to replace actual human interaction, so we don’t understand how no one thought to walk down the hall at ELLE and say, “Hey, Robbie — it’s awesome that you’re on Twitter.” Have we distanced ourselves so far from one another with Twitter and Facebook that we don’t actually know who we’re talking to anymore? It’s one thing for a fan of someone famous to be taken in by a fake celebrity account on Twitter, but for someone a few cubicles away not to know whether their boss’s account is real or not is inexcusable. Let it be a lesson to all of us: know who you’re retweeting.

[Via Zap2It]

Elle Magazine Joe Zee Magazines robbie meyers Robbie Myers social media Twitter